


Arise

by fallen_woman



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_woman/pseuds/fallen_woman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His wife never dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arise

His wife never dreams.

At night, she sleeps on her back, hands loosely clasped on her chest, and does not stir until morning, despite his thrashing in the sheets. Many times, he startles awake, and automatically reaches for her, before pulling his hand back. He does not wish to disturb her.

As soon as he closes his eyes, he sees the grasping slashes of brambles, hears the whipcrack of laughter and green flame, feels his steed’s heart pulsing and sweating between his thighs as the witch pours herself into the sky. The bridge falls. He falls. The fairies scream. Sometimes the sword shrieks through his own heart, and as his chest melts with blood he opens his eyes.

Roaming the castle at night (barefoot, always—the better to feel the flagstones) soothes him. He tries to avoid the palace guards, who know his nocturnal habits and keep double-watch in the darkness; he likes the illusion of solitary vigil, while the rest of the world slumbers.

In his second year on the throne, there is a drought. His wife births a girl during the fourth month of skeleton crops, so there is no lavish christening. The child grows up bright but willful; no amount of gentling eases the brambles of her hair or the hard green cast of her temper. While the queen is perplexed, he’s secretly proud.

In his daughter’s sixteenth year, bandits raid the southern borders of the kingdom. The nobles grouse about taxes, agitating for independence. Courage in kingship, he finds as the years knit his brow with wrinkles and garland his hair with grey, is not worth so much as patience. He learns to welcome the nightmares, as reminders of a time when his heart ran hot and his feet fleet. His queen holds his hands in hers, her laughter sailing above both their tired bodies, and he remembers that this is a good life.

He catches the fever in his sixtieth year, and he knows. At his bedside, his wife cries her eyes sore, while his child and his grandchildren stand in glazed terror. Although he realizes what must happen and what he must leave behind, he feels muffled, as if there were a veil between himself and the rest of the world. Clasping his hands on his chest, the king says a prayer, then waits for death.

Lips against his: he sees the purple collar first, then the long chin, the curled yellow eyes. Fingers around his neck. Knees on his chest. The smell of something burning and snapping in the wind. At first, he cannot breathe; then, he feels as if the entire sky has poured itself into his lungs.

“Arise, my king,” Maleficent says, and Phillip obliges.


End file.
